This is something I’ve been mulling over for some time, possibly in reaction to the relentless advertising lately for the rather transparently BB-targeted rom-com, Hope Springs. I think the attempt that it represents to draw Baby Boomers back into the theater will prove futile.
Here’s my question: what’s the quintessential Baby Boomer movie comedy? Let’s start by defining our terms. By “Baby Boomer” I mean an American born between 1946 and 1964. By “Baby Boomer movie comedy” I mean a movie written, directed, and starring Baby Boomers for mostly a Baby Boomer audience, generally from 1978 to 2000.
I think there are basically three strains of Baby Boomer movie comedies: Abrahams and Zucker; Landis, Ramis, and Aykroyd; and the Coen brothers.
Landis, Ramis, and Aykroyd
Animal House (1978) is, arguably, the first break-out Baby Boomer comedy. The team of director, writers, and actors that made it went on to produce more than a dozen movies including Caddy Shack, The Blues Brothers, and Ghostbusters. Some of the team, Landis (1950) and Belushi (1949), are Baby Boomers, other are “Baby Boomer adjacent”, i.e. either they born just outside the timeframe of my definition or they’re Canadians. e.g. Dan Aykroyd (1952) and Harold Ramis (1944). This is the team that specialized in “slob humor”, sort of a combination of hipster humor with the Bowery Boys.
Abrahams and Zucker
Jim Abrahams (1944) and David Zucker released their breakout hit, Airplane! in 1980. These were followed by the Hot Shot and Naked Gun pictures and continue right to the present in the Scary Movie movies. These pictures are broad parodies, filled with movie references and sly humor.
The Coen Brothers
Joel and Ethan Coen released their first comedy, Raising Arizona, which starred Holly Hunter (1958) and Nicolas Cage (1964). Their comedies include Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Big Lebowski, and O, Brother, Where Art Thou?. Like the Abrahams and Zucker movies their pictures tend to be filled with references to movies, television, and popular culture but they’re generallya bit more sophisticated than the A&Z movies.
For my taste Raising Arizona is the acme of Baby Boomer humor and I suspect that their O. Brother, Where Art Thou? is probably the last great Baby Boomer movie comedy. It’s possible that someone may produce a great BB movie comedy about aging but, somehow, I doubt it.
This isn’t encyclopedic. I don’t consider Nora Ephron’s pictures to be Baby Boomer pictures. The actors who star in her pictures, e.g. Billy Crystal, Tom Hanks, and Meg Ryan, are Baby Boomers but she wasn’t and I think her humor and that of romantic comedies more generally hearkens back to older influences like Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.
Thoughts? What do you think is the best Baby Boomer comedy? What characteristics do you think typify Baby Boomer comedies?
Update
As I wrote above, this isn’t encyclopedic. I suddenly realized that I omitted a major strain: the Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Spinal Tap strain. While I think that This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind are brilliant, these are mostly virtually cult pictures. Interestingly, I know a bit about the inner side of all of the subjects of these movies (except rock music, i.e. community theater, dog shows, and folk music) and for my money they’re slightly toned-down documentaries.
Speaking of cult classics, how about Porky’s and Rocky Horror?
I think they set the stage for what was to come but neither Jim Sharman (writer and director of Rocky Horror) nor Bob Clark (writer and director of Porky’s were Baby Boomers.
I immediately thought of Rob Reiner. And surely When Harry Met Sally counts as a comedy, and it was huge. (It made 92 mil, actually, which left it just shy of blockbuster status at the time.) Not sure how big (at the box office) The Princess Bride was, but it and This is Spinal Tap (a shame I can’t put an umlaut over the ‘n’) are two of the most quotable movies ever. In fact, in my life I’ve heard either of those quoted about ten times more often than The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and Casablanca combined. I’m not kidding!
Monty Python movies count? How about Roxanne? I also would put Princess Bride on the list.
Steve
My wife (a Gen Xer like me) said Steve Martin (b. 1945). That’s a good call too. And don’t forget Cheech and Chong. Richard Pryor is a little too old to be a Boomer, though. Not sure if that should be a limiting criterion, though. John Hughes is a Boomer, but he did a lot of the quintessential Gen Xer movies, though I don’t much care for them myself. (The BEST movie about being a Gen Xer in high school is Fast Times at Ridgemont High, also put together by Boomers – but they caught the zeitgeist perfectly.)
What characteristics do you think typify Baby Boomer comedies?
Vulgarity. Not just flaunting of social conventions, but making a point of rubbing it in the faces of their elders. (Anal Intruder? That’s not terribly sly.) A complete disregard for consequences – which is to say a complete lack of conscience. (Hey, let’s make the rapist-kidnapper a future senator – for laughs!)
With the exception of Terry Gilliam the Monty Python crew are Brits and, by and large, they’re too old. Definitely not Baby Boomers. Steve Martin is an interesting case. I don’t think he’s a Baby Boomer and his humor isn’t Boomer humor. Is he a hipster? Maybe.
When Harry Met Sally was written by Nora Ephron who was definitely not a Baby Boomer. I think it has an older sensibility, enhanced by the presence of Billy Crystal who definitely comes from a significantly older comedic tradition.
Cheech and Chong fit and are undoubtedly the fathers of stoner humor. Otherwise, I think they’re pretty minor.
Richard Pryor is too old but note that Eddie Murphy is a Baby Boomer while Chris Rock is a Gen Xer. Which, I guess, proves that Baby Boomers have not cornered the market on crudity.
Yes, Princess Bride is a good pick. It’s right up there in the pantheon and it definitely belongs to the Rob Reiner-Chris Guest faction.
As you may have noticed I have a lower tolerance for vulgarity, crudity, or cruelty than many of my contemporaries. That may be another reason I prefer the Coen Brothers or Reiner-Guest over Abrahams-Zucker or Landis & Co. Not to mention that Landis is scum.
My initial thought went to Woody Allen, but he was born in ’35. His actresses tend to be . . . er . . . younger, like Diane Keaton (’46), Mia Farrow (’45), Mariel Hemingway (’61), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (’61), Tracey Ullman (’59), Dianne Wiest (’48), Blythe Danner (’43), Judy Davis (’55). I probably haven’t seen one of his movies in 20 years, but they struck me as Baby-Boomer oriented, but not always comedies.
George Lucas, American Graffiti.
Not to mention that Landis is scum.
Don’t hold back.
Also, that makes him different than the average Hollywood director how?
Which, I guess, proves that Baby Boomers have not cornered the market on crudity.
Not any more. And it started with Lenny Bruce. (Well, he’s the guy that really pushed it most famously, I think.)
Gen Xers tend to be a little more conscious of the fact that if you fuck up, someone somewhere is likely going to pay a price for your incompetence and/or malfeasance.
…
A note of terms. People born from 1960 to 1964 classify as Boomers on a lot of these charts, but they’re really the original Gen Xers. A lot of the touchstones of Boomer-dom don’t register for those folks. Where were you when Kennedy was shot? “Ted Kennedy was shot?” Vietnam? Didn’t Springsteen sing about that in 1984? Civil Rights? You talkin’ about Rodney King or Tawana Brawley?
…
On another topic entirely, it came to me the other day that Barack Obama and his ilk are EXACTLY the people Allan Bloom wrote about in “The Closing of the American Mind”. Which makes that, perhaps, one more thing to add to my reading list. (I haven’t read that since 1990 or so.) But probably not. By the time I get through my backlog the election will be over, and maybe I won’t have to care about it even theoretically.
I’m pretty sure Douglas Copeland used the term Generation X to refer to people born in those years specifically, but perhaps I’m misremembering. I haven’t read that book in years. I’d skim it but I’ve got too much to read right now. (Yeah, what am I doing here?)
What the heck? My last comment’s paragraphs got re-ordered. The last paragraph should have followed the paragraph that starts “A note on terms….”
American Graffiti is a comedy? I’m not even sure it fits the classic definition of the term. Two of the four main characters dead and one of the others has fled the country as a draft dodger.
That said… Candy Clark, YUM!
American Grafiti won awards as a comedy, maybe that’s a Boomer thing, comedies that are realy dramedies or black comedies. Is _The War of the Roses_ a Boomer commedy? Are any of Tim Burton’s movies funny (except for Pee Wee’s Big Adventure)?
My wife wanted me to add Flashback to the list. With its hippie theme, it should be a candidate. She also wants As Good As It Gets, but I am not sure that was really aimed at boomers. Harold And Maude should be on there somewhere.
Query- While we talked this over at dinner, movie spoofs came up. Going beyond broad parodies, which were the best spoofs, the ones where a movie was clearly made to spoof another movie? Our first thought was Airplane.
Steve
I think the most brilliant movie spoof ever was Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam. Lifting Bogart’s speech at the airport from the end of Casablanca verbatim in a completely different context is just inspired.
Is there a difference between spoof and parody? I think Young Frankenstein is a parody movie that in many ways surprasses the material its spoofing.
You might say the same of Shaun of the Dead, though I don’t like it as much.
In part because of the tremendous talent involved.
by your definition, i think it is a toss between “Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers”.
What puts the Abraham parodies in another class is that they took boomer tv show star icons like Leslie Nielsen (The Swamp Fox), Robert Stack (Untouchables), and Lloyd Bridges (Sea Hunt) and turned around their persona from dramatic actors into great slapstick comedians.
Forget those GUYS, larry – look what they did to the Beav’s Mom!
Randy: Can I get you something?
Second Jive Dude: ‘S’mofo butter layin’ me to da’ BONE! Jackin’ me up… tight me!
Randy: I’m sorry, I don’t understand.
First Jive Dude: Cutty say ‘e can’t HANG!
Jive Lady: Oh stewardess! I speak jive.
Randy: Oh, good.
Jive Lady: He said that he’s in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.
Randy: All right. Would you tell him to just relax and I’ll be back as soon as I can with some medicine?
Jive Lady: [to the Second Jive Dude] Jus’ hang loose, blood. She gonna catch ya up on da’ rebound on da’ med side.
Second Jive Dude: What it is, big mama? My mama no raise no dummies. I dug her rap!
Jive Lady: Cut me some slack, Jack! Chump don’ want no help, chump don’t GET da’ help!
First Jive Dude: Say ‘e can’t hang, say seven up!
Jive Lady: Jive ass dude don’t got no brains anyhow! Shiiiiit.
The Beav’s MOM!